104 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 



imperfect that we are very far from having all the in- 

 formation we need. A great part of the head, with its 

 formidable looking horns, is present, and although the 

 nose is gone, we know from other specimens that it, too, 

 was armed with a knob, or horn, and that the skull 

 ended in a beak, something like that of a snapping 

 turtle, though formed by a separate and extra bone; 

 similarly the end of the lower jaw is lacking, but we may 

 be pretty certain that it ended in a beak, to match that 

 of the skull. The large leg-bones of our specimen are 

 mostly represented, for these being among the more 

 solid parts of the skeleton are more frequently preserved 

 than any others, and though some are from one side and 

 some from another, this matters not. If the hind legs 

 were disproportionately long it would indicate that our 

 animal often or habitually walked erect, but as there is 

 only difference enough between the fore and hind limbs 

 to enable Triceratops to browse comfortably from the 

 ground we would naturally place him on all fours, even 

 were the skull not so large as to make the creature too 

 top-heavy for any other mode of locomotion. Were 

 the limbs very small in comparison with the other bones, 

 it would obviously mean that their owner passed his 

 life in the water. For a skeleton has a two-fold meaning, 

 it is the best, the most enduring, testimony we have as 

 to an animal's place in nature and the relationships it 

 sustains to the creatures that lived with it, before it, 

 and after it. More than this, a skeleton is the solution 

 of a problem in mechanics, the problem of carrying a 

 given weight and of adaptation to a given mode of life. 

 Thus the skeleton varies according as a creature dwells 

 on land, in the water, or in the air, and according as it 

 feeds on grass or preys upon its fellows. 



And so the mechanics of a skeleton afford us a clew 

 to the habits of the living animal. Something, too, may 



